© General Striker News Service, 2009

Econ 101

The US has completed a de facto repudiation of debt. How was this possible and what does it matter? It's possible because capital is essentially amoral. Debt has no other reality than as a monetary instrument regardless of the importunate protests of the lender. Debt is no more than a matter of record keeping. It only becomes overbearing and consequential when it has become imbued with the quality of moral obligation- which is essentially nothing more than a refutation of reality. This is so because money is conjured out of thin air and depends for its value on nothing more substantial than faith. Faith in the value of currency is all that stands between wealth and penury. This is so for nations as well as individuals. It can be said that economic value is actually derived from the production of commodities and, as Marx and the rest of the civilized world would have us believe, the labor required for that very production. But this is not so and has never been so. Economic value is actually determined by the records of bookkeepers. And therefore both accumulation of wealth and the onerous bonds of debt are equally illusory figments. Freedom from economic shackles is simply a matter of tossing the books on the ash bin of history. It is the case that those who are imprisoned by monetary economy must be complicit in their own captivity in order for the bars of the gaol to remain secure. The worst nightmare for the rich is the waking of the people from the cloying hypnosis brought about by the political magicians in their employ. It is of such stuff that economic depressions are constructed. Economic depression is freedom in the last analysis.